


when you kiss my lips, you'll make it stick.

by replacements



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Jason is NOT UNDERAGE in this universe don't @ me, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Past Sexual Abuse, Praise Kink, as in the show, possessive!Dick, titans!canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-30 18:24:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18320774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/replacements/pseuds/replacements
Summary: An extended scene/divergence of canon at the safehouse after Dick and Jason meet in Titans. But it's vaguely written enough for you to imagine any jaydick of your choice. Spin the wheel.





	when you kiss my lips, you'll make it stick.

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [当你吻上我的唇，你会让触觉存留。](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18445808) by [sarriathmg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarriathmg/pseuds/sarriathmg)



I hate how hard it is to hate him. 

Near impossible, really. And it fucking infuriates me. The smooth milky caramel skin, hazel shot eyes ringed red and purple with sleeplessness, the oddly pouted lips, like a doll made to stick a little plastic bottle into. 

He’s disintegrating me, pounding me into metaphysical dust as he boasts about his suit and the fabric and the upgrades and the goddamn tracker in his arm—my arm—fuck—and I want to stick my fingers in his mouth. Hold his boyish jaw in one hand and slide my fingers slow into those snarling pouted lips. I imagine the startled sound he’d make, low and stuck in his throat. He’d close his eyes, open wider, I bet. I bet he’s _good_. 

I shouldn’t have let him drink. You look like you're sixteen, I’d scoffed. 

Nineteen, he’d corrected, violently demure. But I’m old for my age. He laughs at some joke I don't get. 

He’s talking too much, showing too much. Skin, eyes, secrets. He’d strip naked if I asked him to. Hell, I’m starting to worry he’ll do that without any external influence. He’s drunk, and falling forward, his head to heavy for his slender little swan neck, and I have to catch him lest he snap it right off. I imagine it tumbling to the floor. I shift my shoulders, look anywhere but down at the saucer sized hazel eyes affixed to the crook of my neck. 

“Shouldn’t have let you drink,” I say. The words scratch up my throat like an allergic reaction.

He laughs into my neck, vibrating with smeared innocence. He knows I’m uncomfortable. That he’s making me nervous. He likes it. 

“I been drinking since before you were born,” he pokes his index finger into the top button of my shirt, chuckling in a snorty little kid way. Guilt seeps into my blood stream like poison. It sings so hard it’s sweet. 

I can see why Bruce chose him. 

He sits up and surveys me like he’s stone cold sober. For a wrenching whiplash moment, I think he might be. 

“Hey man,” he says, in that tinny voice that’s too practiced to be real. Too raw to be true. “Seriously, like. I just want you to know, when you were Robin and you came out as bi, that like, changed my life.” 

I’m shocked out of my psychosis, blinking and present and painfully aware of my surroundings. My insides. This boy. Flesh and blood and heaving lungs and a crooked mouth that can’t seem which side of his Michelangelo face to rest on. It was like a bad joke. Like Socrates had been granted a wish. There was a punchline in there, somewhere. 

A metaphor. 

My stomach is broiling. Jason’s eyes are big and shiny in the light and his eyelids blink open and closed like a sleepy doll. 

I’m jealous, that Bruce found him first. I’m Jealous, that he’s being doted on in a way I never was. I’m jealous and it pounds in my heart. Bruising, but not altogether unpleasant. 

Jason licks his cracked lips, and for a moment it’s like some filmy fourth wall breaks and I see him in a starling blaze of realness and it shocks my brain like a lightning strike and flashes hot white inside me, for just one breathless moment. 

It was like being mid-air, again, that delightful roll of your stomach right before you were caught. Like slipping roughly from a dream. 

I had once been told, not unkindly, that I was addicted to heart attacks. 

I must be, because I’m having one now, and it’s hot and scraping like a knife. 

And I scratch my back against it like a prowling cat. 

Jason is here, somehow, still. It feels like it’s been hours. Twinges of fractal blue light spin across his face and I blink in the unfamiliar night around us. How long had it been? 

“It’s not like what they all think,” Jason’s crooked pouty lips mouth the sounds out at him in slow motion. “Is it, Dick?” 

The puncture of my own name needles my ears. There was a word for it. An acronym. A scientifically proven biological process I have no control over. Panic freezes my blood to slush. Jason’s hand is on my knee, fingers moving in erratic, torturously slow patterns, lightyears older than nineteen. 

I think I’m going to puke. 

“Was he fucking you?” Jason asks, and somehow that brings me back down to Earth. Makes me laugh. 

I take my chances, turning my head to look at Jason. The rims of his eyes are still stained black, haphazardly wiped off, he couldn’t wait to get out of his suit, tell me his name, show me himself. 

He’s not going to make it. 

I get up from the couch, walk to the bathroom, fumble around the medicine cabinet until I find something antibacterial and get to work. 

I’m biting off the edge of the self-stick tape when Jason stumbles in, drunk and flushed red and horrified. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” He lunges forward, processing too slowly, like he still has time to stop me. 

God, he’s such a Robin. 

And I don’t think Bruce made him this way. 

I catch him easily, roughly, pinning his back against the sink that’s still swirling my blood down the drain. He’s cursing at me, struggling, I grab him by the jaw and reach for the washcloth. 

“Shh,” I say, and he relaxes in my grip. I hold up the warm, wet washcloth with one hand. “Come here.” 

He leans forward, silent, and lets me hold him in place while I scrub and wipe his face clean. I’m not surprised, but I’m fucking devastated. I want to tell him how good he is. I want to run my hands through his messy mop of dark hair. I want him on his hands and knees. 

“I had a poster of you,” he slurs into my neck while I guide him out of the bathroom. He tries pulling our combined weight back to the couch but I drag him toward the bedroom. 

“You need to rest,” I say. 

He slumps against me, pliable and obedient. I wonder if he’s like this for Bruce. If that’s why he keeps him on such a long leash. I wonder if he’s just a drunk kid who wants attention. The probability of the latter stings at me and self-loathing bubbles low in my stomach. 

“It was the one from that shitty teen magazine,” Jason tells me, holding my wrists after I lay him down in one of the beds. He lifts a flailing hand up to tap me on the chin. 

“Remember?” 

I do. It had been Bruce’s idea. He’d fucked something up, big time, and needed a distraction. Sweet sixteen year old Robin posing for a magazine in just his mask and armored shorts was the perfect solution. They barraged me with asinine questions, favorite color, favorite sports team, was I a morning person, favorite restaurant in Gotham, describe my perfect date, and that was when I’d started to sweat. There was no way Bruce had set up this interview without seeing all the questions they were going to ask me himself. What was he trying to get out of me? Did he really think this was a proper substitute for sitting down and having a conversation with me? 

My son? Oh, I don’t know him, but I’d like to. I’ll have someone ask him some questions. Thanks for your time, everybody. 

I’d seen Bruce cry, once. He didn’t know I was there. I was fourteen and he was all by himself with a half empty bottle of cheap whiskey. I hid under the gap in the stairs and just watched him drink and cry until Alfred scooped me up backwards and carried me away. 

“No joy in being Bruce Wayne,” he’d quipped strangely, tucking me into my bed like I was a child. “Everybody thinks they know you, and no one knows you at all.” 

I’d scoffed at that. “He won’t let anyone know him.” 

Alfred had sighed, ran an exhausted hand through my hair. 

“People have been picking off pieces of him since he was born. He was bound to run out eventually.” 

Gee, I’d thought, completely devoid of compassion. Lucky me. 

“Boys or girls?” I’d asked the reporter, who’d met my words with a robotic blinking stare.

“Uh,” she shifted her notes. “Pardon?” 

“You asked if I had a type,” I’d reminded her, burning with adrenaline, already hot for the lecture I was going to get later. “You mean in boys or girls? Because it’s very different.” 

“Oh, uh,” The honey blonde reporter laughed nervously, light pink embarrassment flushing her porcelain cheeks. “Too true! Uh, both, I guess?” She mugged animatedly to the camera, a natural damage controller. Bruce should hire her. I wondered if he already had. 

“No,” I tell Jason, and he looks disappointed, until I remind him of his earlier question. 

“He wasn’t fucking me.” I can’t help but laugh again. It’s not even a disgusting thought to me, just pathetic. And yet still, a fire of defense rages in my chest. “He’s not…like that.” 

“What a relief,” Jason slumps back onto the pillow with a reckless thwack. “I was starting to think I smelled or something.” 

Jesus Christ. I should have known. 

“Jason,” I say, and it feels wrong to say his name out loud, too intimate, too powerful. He twists around in bed lazily to face him, propping himself up on one spindly elbow. 

He smirks up at me, predicting my next move before I can make it. 

“Why else would some rando billionaire want to fucking adopt me?” Jason snickers, shaking his head like he still can’t believe it. 

“And you still went with him?” I don’t mean it to come out like an accusation. I wince. Jason just shrugs, immunized to cruelty. 

“Not like I had much of a choice. Plus, it was a hell of an upgrade. My last placement was a trailer park. That dad used to take me out to the port-a-potties in the middle of the night. I figured, if Bruce Wayne wants to fuck me, at least he has a pool.” 

I can’t believe Bruce finally did it. Got himself the perfect sad, damaged little boy to follow his every command, worship the ground he walks on. Jason thinks Bruce is some fucking knight in shining armor. I realize, only just in that moment, maybe he fucking is. Maybe he saw what was happening to Jason and cared. Maybe he loves him. 

“He’s gonna break your heart,” I say. Jason rolls his eyes. Pokes me in the chest. 

“My heart’s been broken since before you were born.” 

I laugh at that. And fuck, I can’t stop myself. I lean forward to push Jason’s hair out of his eyes, stroke the coarse black waves back away from his face, tuck the stray strands of hair behind his ears. He leans into the touch like he’s been programmed to respond to my hands. 

“I thought there was something wrong with me,” He whispers, head twitching to chase the press of my fingers. I let him rub his chapped lips across my knuckles. What’s wrong with _me_ becomes very apparent. 

“I thought I was all messed up,” he confesses into the folds of my palm. “Cause of what happened—you know—I didn’t think it was normal. To like—to want—” 

“Go on,” I urge gently. Every word from his mouth is a hit of a heavy drug and I need him to give me more. “Tell me.” 

He nudges his snub nose into my shoulder shyly. “When you talked about liking boys, in that interview, it really helped me.” 

He says it fast, like it’s an old peeling band-aid he’s finally been forced to rip off. 

My chest aches. I want to help him. All he has is Bruce. 

He needs me. 

And I need him to want me, want me more than he wants him. I need him to be mine. Not Bruce’s. Mine. 

I stroke my thumb across his bottom lip. He closes his long lashed eyes. He’d let me do anything to him right now, I can feel it. Robin. Boy Wonder. His hero. The power of it burns my tongue like the wrong side of a battery. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Jason.” 

He reacts to the sound of his name like a needle in his neck. He hates it, he wants me to say it again. 

“Jason,” I say. I run my knuckles across his jaw. I don’t know what else to say. I’m sitting here with the textbook definition of Life Isn’t Fair and I want to fucking hold him, I want to say something to make it all better, I want him know how good he is. 

“You’re perfect,” I tell him, and he ducks away from the words, from my hand on his neck. 

“You don’t know me.” He’s snarling now, sizing me up like we’re about to fight. 

“No,” I agree. I look down at my hands. I try to remember that day, the photoshoot, the interview, with more clarity. 

“I want to,” I say, feeling the utter uselessness of the truth as familiar as it always is. “I want to know you.” 

Jason bristles, shoulders still pulled back, his body is trained to react to danger. 

And I don’t think Bruce made him that way. 

“You didn’t deserve what happened to you.” The worst possible thing I could say. 

“It wasn’t your fault.” Followed by the very worst. 

“Whatever,” he scoffs, but he’s gone lax again, flopping face up into bed, his ratty t-shirt riding up his barely toned stomach. A trail of dark hair runs from his belly button down to the band of his boxers hiked up out of his jeans. 

He jerks when I reach for the button, and I hush him.

“S’alright,” I murmur, digging my thumbs into his exposed hip bones. “I’m not trying to hurt you.” 

He’s breathing hard, half terror half something too terrible to define. 

“Just let me help you,” I say, moving on to the zipper. His slender hips lift up as I wrap my fingers through the empty belt loops of his jeans and pull them down. 

He looks up at me eagerly, as innocent and trusting as Rachel, and I feel sick to my stomach, because I don’t see him the way I see Rachel, and I refuse to let that be his fault. 

“Stole it,” he says, kicking at my side with his bare foot. 

I look down at the jeans I’m folding. “Hm?” 

“The magazine,” Jason stretches ungracefully where he lays. “When it came out, I saw it in the store, and I didn’t have any money, so I stole it.” 

He says with equal parts shame and pride, and I think there’s something in him, a deep dark flicker of something that looks too familiar to face head on, and I have to ignore it. 

“Wanna know how I did it?” His knees are bent, kicking awkwardly at the blankets around him like a fussy child. He boldens at my silence, kicking and stretching one of those long, tan legs over my lap. 

I wrap my wrist around his ankle and tug. He laughs, wriggles ineffectually, he loves being caught. 

“I had to hide it under my shirt,” he says, one hand sliding down the one he’s wearing to serve as a visual aid. He lets his fingers move the hem even higher, slides his hand down his bare stomach. “And stick it in here.” 

I react before I think, grabbing hold of his wrist roughly, pulling his hand out of his boxers. 

“Jason,” it hurts to talk. It’s no use. I’m already picturing it. An even younger version of the boy in front of me, looking at those ridiculous photos of me with my shirt off, reading all the stupid shit I said, wanting me so badly he had to touch himself. 

He sits up, undeterred by the warning in my voice, practically in my lap, but at just the right angle to press his lips up to my ear. 

“I wanna suck you off.” 

I have to laugh. “No you don’t.” 

He makes a disgruntled noise, noses at my jaw. 

“You know Bruce probably has this place tapped out the ass,” I tell him, thumb circling dangerously around the protruding bone of his ankle. “He can either hear or see everything.” I scoff. “Maybe both.” 

Jason presses his lips to my skin, hums against my stubbling jaw. “Then he can watch me suck you off.” 

The image of it would have brought me to my knees if I wasn’t already sitting. I look down and see Jason kneeling between my legs, my hands in his hair, those pouty lips wrapped around my cock. I groan. Jason’s still mouthing and biting at my neck like a feral wolf. He’s pleased to have gotten a reaction out of me. I let him be. He looks so sweet when he’s pleased. I let him slide one hand down my chest, I let him undo my belt, my jeans, I let him slide his hand inside and palm the wet spot in my underwear, let him know just how good he is. 

I grab his wrist and extract it, lifting it up to my lips so I can kiss his bruised knuckles. 

“You did so good today,” I say, and he stills mid struggle. 

I keep kissing his fingers. “Your reaction time, your reflexes, your instincts. So good.” 

He melts, of course, and pulling him across my lap is like spreading soft butter over warm bread. 

“I want to be a good Robin,” he tells me. “I want to be as good as you.”

I hold his face in my hands. I kiss his forehead, the tip of his nose, his lips. 

I let him kiss me, let him sigh into my mouth, let him be messy and inexperienced with his tongue. Even like this, he’s perfect. 

Fuck. Bruce doesn’t deserve him. 

“God,” Jason pulls back from me, rolls his eyes, and I realize too late I’ve been speaking out loud. He shifts in my lap. 

“Stop being so jealous and just fuck me already.” 

“I’m not going to fuck you.” 

“Hmm,” Jason pouts, leaning forward to peck at my neck. “Yes, you are.” 

I laugh, my hands on his hips, pushing him back. “No.” 

“Why not?” Jason fingers at the small patch of hair visible on my chest. “Haven’t I been good enough?” 

I squeeze his hips and bite my lip and try to come to terms with the fact that nothing will ever feel like this. Like _this_. My mind traitorously flits to Kory, to Dawn, to less important people I’ve forgotten the names and faces of. I know what I am and I’m proud of it, but this boy, this boy who took my place, who’s already better at it than I ever was, this beautiful broken awful boy, no one could ever possibly pull my strings the way he does. I’m addicted to him, I don’t even know him, I want him so fucking badly. 

“Dick,” He rocks back and forth in my lap, the rough fabric of my jeans rubbing against the bulge in his boxers. “Please,” he begs. “What do I have to do to get you to touch me?” 

“Shh,” I hush at him, my lips pressing back to his. The sound he makes when I do touch him is almost too much to bear. I feel like I should be ashamed of myself. But his eyes are closed and his lips are parted and he’s so goddamn beautiful, I can’t be bothered with much else. 

His hands are wrenched into fists, ripping holes in the fabric of my shirt, probably. He’s whining, rocking into my hand, begging my name. 

I get his shirt off and lay him down, dragging my lips from his jaw to his collarbone and back up again. 

“What do you want, little wing?” 

He scoffs at the name, I do my best to pretend like it wasn’t something I’d seriously say, and squirms underneath me, tugs at my shirt, so I take it off for him. 

His hands are all over me, and I’m completely fucked, so gone for him, when he finally gets his hands on my cock, he knows it. 

“Yeah?” His voice goes lower than I’ve ever heard it. “Feel good?” 

I can’t speak, I’m fucking wrecked, he thumbs at the slit and kisses me through the sound I make. 

He opens his mouth to say something, I don’t know what, because he falters for just a second, and then its like a frozen lake cracking, and he crumples altogether, and I’m moving faster than I can think again, his hands are covering his face, he wrenches away from me, I try not to push him, he’s embarrassed. Fuck. 

“Jason,” I say, catching him around the middle and holding his back flush against my chest. “Jason, Jason.” I trail kisses across his shoulder blades. “It’s okay.” 

It’s not okay. But he’s fucking crying and I have to do something. I am all at once suffocated with the idea that he’s my responsibility. My replacement. My some kind of brother. My little wing. 

Whatever he is, I hold him in my arms and squeeze, murmuring to him, how sorry I am, how perfect he is, he isn’t hearing me. 

“I’m—sorry,” he chokes out, rubbing at his swollen eyes. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” 

“Nothing,” I assure him, settling us down into the bed. I fumble around for purchase on reality, time, how long has it been since…? 

“It’s been a long day,” I say, which I’m almost certain is true. “You need to rest.” 

“No,” he sniffs more than speaks, his voice thick with snot and tears. “No, please, I’m fine. We can still—” He reaches for me and I pull back. I wish I would have slapped him. The look on his face would have made me less sick than this one does. 

“I’m sorry,” he tries again, sniffling and shaking his head. “Please, Dick.” He gets a kiss in under my ear. “We can do whatever you want. I'll do anything, anything you want. Please, please don’t be mad at me.” 

“Fuck, Jason,” I sigh, pulling my broken little wing back into my lap. “I’m not mad at you. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just—” I almost laugh around the words. “I’m not gonna fuck you while you’re crying.” 

“I’m not crying,” he sobs. 

I kiss the side of his head. 

“I’ll stop,” he promises. “I won’t cry. I’ll be quiet.” 

It astounds me how much damage has been done to one undeserving teenage boy, how frightening it is that this might be the first time he’s ever broken down like this in front of someone else, and how much more damage I was just about to do to him? 

“I said I wouldn’t hurt you.” 

He twists around in my hold on him. “You weren’t hurting me. I messed up. I’m sorry, please, let me fix it.” He gets one hand around my neck to kiss at the hollow of my throat. 

“There’s nothing to fix,” I get his face in my hands again, force him look at me. “Jason, you didn’t break anything.” 

“You don’t want me anymore,” he spits, betrayed and bitter, covering himself in spikes again.

I don’t care, I’ll let them cut into me, and bleed out right here, I won’t let go of him. I only hold him closer. 

My responsibility. 

This boy’s going to be the death of me. 

I’ll die, then. 

Kory can take care of Rachel and Gar. 

Jason only has Bruce. He _needs_ me. 

“Maybe I’m just not in the mood,” I tease him. “Maybe I just want to cuddle.” 

“But I can make you feel good,” the fact that he’s still trying is starting to sicken me in ways I don’t fully understand. 

I kiss his sweaty forehead. 

“You _are_ making me feel good,” I tell him, and fuck, it’s the truth. “Just lay with me.” 

I can tell that he doesn’t understand it, that it makes no sense to him, he doesn’t know what his purpose is if its not a blade to sling or a hole to fuck. I can’t help but hold him tighter, like somehow that will fix it, undo all the damage that’s already been done. 

“I want you,” I say, when his breathing’s slowed and his muscles have relaxed against me. “I want you like this.” 

“What’s this?” he asks, throaty voice dripping with sarcastic venom. 

I snort, kiss the back of his neck. “Good question.” 

He rolls around to face me so he can kiss my mouth and I let him. This time it’s me chasing his lips with my tongue and teeth. He’s either an inhumanly fast learner or a diabolical tease. 

“I love your mouth,” I say, fully aware of what a strange thing it is to say. But it’s true. The odd shape of it, the way his lips curl and part and twist and pout and suck, I can’t stop kissing him. It’s like I can’t get close enough to fully taste, and I have to keep trying, kiss him harder, shove my tongue in deeper, and I come up more parched every time. 

And when he finally stops teasing, kisses me back in earnest, fuck. I could come, just from kissing him.

He’s going to kill me. 

I can’t wait. 

By the time I’m inside him, the windows are pouring in bright baby blue light, and I can look at him in three dimensions, swathed in the gauzy light of too early morning. 

“Jason,” I warn, holding his hips still in my lap. “You have to talk to me, okay? You have to tell me if I’m hurting you—” 

He shoves me backward, the surprise of it knocking me flat onto my back, and his hands are around my wrists, and he’s smiling. 

“Shut up.” 

He starts to move, rocking back and forth on my cock, then slowly canting his hips up and down. 

“Fuck,” I hiss, his nails are digging into my skin where he’s still pinning my arms over my head. 

He moans low in his throat, it’s such a pretty sound. All the sounds he makes are so pretty. Delicate and feral, bloody raw and wrapped in lace. 

He’s got his eyes shut tight, those fucking lips parted. His grip slackens on my wrist and his hands scramble for purchase before they slam down on my chest, and he’s still moving, and whining, and being so fucking pretty while he gets himself off on my cock. 

“Dick,” he pleads, breathless, slumped down onto my chest, face pressed into my neck, once he can’t hold himself up anymore. 

I grab his hips and push myself upward, he mewls, and my vision blacks out. I feel like it’s not even possible to fuck into something so goddamn tight. But he’s writhing and whining and begging, so I have to. 

He gets loud when I start to fuck him, those guttural, staccato _ah-ah-ah_ sounds I thought only girls in porn made. 

I’m still worried about hurting him, and he tells me to fuck him harder. 

There’s something strange about coming inside him, I’ve never felt so bound to another human being. 

It feels like, there’s no going back now. It feels like, he’s mine. 

He shakes and whimpers from the aftershocks until he’s spilling all over my stomach. I dip my finger into a still-wet stripe and bring it to my mouth. 

It tastes sour, sweet. 

I want to suck it from the source, so I clean him up with my tongue, licking up the insides of his thighs, sucking his soft sensitive cock into my mouth, he shivers uncontrollably, fists in my hair, pulling so hard it hurts. 

I’m already hard again. 

I want him to sleep, but he won’t. He’s restless after sex. He says he needs to go. Needs to check in with Bruce. 

“No,” I tell him, hooking my leg around his waist. I kiss his shoulder. 

He laughs, squirms, grunts in annoyance. “Let go of me.” 

He doesn’t want me to, though. So I do. Just to feel the satisfaction of that sleepy pout on his face when he nuzzles himself ruefully back into my arms. 

“You could come with us,” I say, at some point. Kory and the kids will be here soon. Rachel would give Jason a run for his money. Gar would would be over the moon with him. 

Jason sighs, too wistful a sound for a nineteen year old to make. He wriggles out from under me and sits up in bed. 

“You said it yourself,” he tells me with a sideways smirk. “Batman needs a Robin.” 

“Did I?” I stretch painfully in bed, rolling my aching shoulders back and fixing him with a stern look. “I think what I actually meant was, Dick needs a Jason.” 

“Shut up,” he growls, flushed from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. He crawls back to me, anyway. I can’t help but smile, because finally I’ve done something right. Jason won’t survive being Robin, not if Bruce is all he has, if he loves him like I think he does. 

He’d die for him. 

I won’t let that happen. 

Because now he’s here, with me, straddling my lap and kissing me, and I can’t help but feel a sick sense of victory, after all. He might think he needs Bruce, but he _wants_ me. And should I ever need to cash in that psychological exploitation to save him, from Bruce, from himself, I will. 

“Take care of yourself.” He’s almost made it out the door, somehow we both got dressed and stumbled all the way through the apartment inbetween kissing. He’s disgusted with me now, so he pushes me off. 

“Ew.” 

I grab him fast around the waist. “I mean it. Don’t push yourself too hard. Don’t lose yourself in it.”

He rolls his eyes, but I can tell he knows exactly what I’m talking about. 

“Stay a little bit soft,” I beg, knocking my forehead into his. “Just for me?” 

“Just for you,” he repeats, sealing the words with a half-hearted kiss and it sounds so much like a promise that’s already been broken I nearly stumble backward from the grief of it. 

“Oh,” he straightens himself up, unbothered or unaware of the cluster bomb that’s exploding in my chest right now. “I forgot.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tiny little something, holds it out for me to take. He drops it into my palm. 

The tracker. 

I feel the sludge of guilt of a plan gone too well coat my insides, the terrifying rush of free falling with nowhere, nothing to hold onto. 

“Jason,” I’m only just now noticing the impossibly small bandage on his arm, and wondering how he managed to fish his out with more precision and less blood than me in my drunken manic episode last night. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” I finally decide to say. He shouldn’t have. Bruce will be angry. He might yell at him. I don’t know if he’s ever yelled at Jason before, but I do feel certain if he did it again I’d probably snap his neck. 

Jason shrugs, happy and reckless, and I want him to stay like this forever. I have this sick feeling like I’m not ever going to see him again. I make him promise to call me, text me, when he’s back at the Manor, and I don’t care that I sound like a desperate lunatic. I need him to promise me, to talk to me, to keep coming back to me. 

The feeling stays with me, heavy and dull in my chest, like I’m having a slow motion heart attack that’s dragging on for hours. Even Gar says something about it, my odd demeanor, oblivious as he is, and Rachel and Kory exchange a silent look because they’d been noticing it since they got here. 

My phone buzzes and I startle at what I see. Apparently Jason became extremely productive when I was sleeping. 

A contact I have no memory of inputting to my phone shines bright across the screen. 

**Little Wing** , it reads, with an emoji of a pink heart with a blue arrow going through it. 

I’m home now 

And then, 

what are you doing? 

And then, 

i miss u. 

Missing you, I text back, like an absolute insane person. 

Try not to die out there.

I stare at the screen of my phone, waiting for him to respond, like this promise will soothe me more than the last one did, will tether him to me like a legally binding document. 

can’t make any promises :p 

I close my eyes. Somehow, this helps. 

“Ooooh,” Rachel croons loud in my ear. “Dick is sexting someone!” 

Gar’s face goes on a long journey of not knowing what emotion to feel, before landing on abject horror. “What? Gross!” 

“I am _not_ ,” I grab my phone back from Rachel, hyperaware of Kory’s acute appraisal of the flush on my face. “Sexting anyone.” 

“Who’s Little Wing?” Rachel asks, smug with delight. I hate her almost as much as I love her. 

I clear my throat, ending this. “My—boyfriend.” 

“ _Boy_ friend?” Rachel’s voice goes impossibly high, like she just got what she wanted but forgot she’d asked for it. 

“Hmm,” Kory shrugs, ambivalent. “That explains a lot.” 

Rachel snickers and Kory sticks her tongue out at me.

“So what if Dick has a boyfriend?” Gar crosses his arms, unamused. “You guys are being kind of, like, homophobic.” 

“Biphobic,” Rachel corrects. “And no we’re not.” She gestures back to Kory. “ _We’re_ bi.” 

“What?” Gar looks shell shocked. The reality of Kory’s sexuality seems to go down easier than Rachel’s. “No you’re not!” 

“Want us to prove it, perv?” Rachel teases, spreading her index and middle finger into a V shape and sticking her tongue out through it. 

“Alright,” I sigh, disturbed at the sight of my psuedo-daughter making such a lewd gesture toward a woman I once had sex with, myself. “Let’s all settle down now. We have real problems to talk about.” 

“Wait,” Gar puts out his hands, like he’s planting his weight to keep himself steady. 

“So you are guys are bi,” he points at Kory and Rachel. “And Dick’s bi too?” He looks to me for some kind of cosmic answers. “Am I the only one who’s not bi?” 

“I don’t know,” Rachel shrugs. “Have you checked?” 

“Rachel,” I glare at her. “I think we’ve traumatized Gar enough for one day.” 

“Oh my God, guys!” Gar grabs at his hair, beside himself. “I can’t just _be_ the only person in the group who’s not bi!” 

“I mean, I’m standing right here.” 

We all spin around and, of course, there he is. 

Of course. There he is. I try to be angry, and I am, I try to slow down my heartbeat, and I can’t. 

“What—How long have you been here?” 

“Him?” Kory juts a thumb out at Jason. “He’s been here the whole time. I thought we just weren’t talking about it.” 

“Not the _whole_ time,” Jason corrects, preening at Kory like a peasant acknowledged by a queen. “Just long enough to find out you have a boyfriend. Wow, and here I thought we had something special.” 

“I’m gay, by the way,” Jason directs at Gar. “That was the joke.” 

“Jason,” I sigh, but he’s already got his arm linked in Rachel’s as she leads him excitedly to the kitchen table to help himself to the pizzas they’d all just been sharing. 

“He’s funny,” Kory decides, holding her penetrating gaze on Jason before shooting her laser beams knowingly at me. “Let’s keep him.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Did all this happen while that bad guy was unconscious and tied up in the shower? Maybe so.


End file.
